My STO bank pretty much just has tribbles and unique weapons in it. Anything of value I acquire gets immediately vendored, traded for dilithium, or sold on the exchange. I don't know how y'all hoard so much stuff.

My STO bank pretty much just has tribbles and unique weapons in it. Anything of value I acquire gets immediately vendored, traded for dilithium, or sold on the exchange. I don't know how y'all hoard so much stuff.

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crafting (i've sold so many quantum torps as of late) I need to maintain around 300 of each particle, and at least 20 of each rare particles and that takes a lot of space, + as of late I am filling fleet bank with particles, around 50-70 of each, each day, I've reached my max atm on most particles, have 7-8 quantum and 10-12 below admiral quantum torpedo on sale. (admiral I didn't craft, wold be waste of resources) there are few ppl who posted very rare mark XI torpedoes at the exchange for next to nothing, I was lucky to get them for peanuts, selling them now for gold press latinum

I've crafted loads of other stuff that I'm selling now and its quite profitable for me at least, in one day I've made 5 million energy credits. Money isn't everything, but it helps if i need some stuff like very rare XII consoles for my ship or some other stuff. Although I am tempted by fleet gear now, it looks better than maco stuff, problem is it ain't cheap.

Ugh, annoyed at myself. Talked myself into opening a couple Temporal lockboxes, thinking that the trend from the Tholian set was to at least give better rewards, right? Well, opened 4 of them, and got:

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I'm saving up my dilithium and by the end if November I'm converting it to zen and then I'm buying 50 keys. Mostly to get 200 Lobis for the timeship console, since I know I'll get nothing else of worth.

I'm still rather surprised at the amount of EC I've manage to generate. In the last two weeks I've managed to generate 240m EC, much of which was done by selling everything I have :P and converting all my borg drops into dilithium (then zen, then to items to sell on the exchange).

Fleet modules - sold on the exchange (since the ships I want are T5 shipyard, I won't need them for a while... if ever).
Borg/Breen/Jem'Hadar set equipment - sold (100,000 EC each)
Loads of purple doffs - sold (to be honest, I'm happy to be rid of my 3 useless purple chefs).
Tour the Universe - Gawd I hate the ESD loading bug.
Numerous other things.

Of course now I'm down to 1m EC. Still, I learned a number of quick ways to grind EC.

So all my banks are pretty empty now. On the bright side, it's meant I've gotten rid of stuff I'd have never used anyway.

I started playing months ago (not long after it went f2p), and am only learning a bunch of this past week or so I've been back. I guess actually going on a forum and talking to people about it helps somewhat

I'm trying to equip five ships (not that one) without spending any of the various monies It's slow going - when I was building up my escort there, I would get little but beams, but when I'm trying to equip four non-escorts, lots and lots of cannons Other than that just some unique stuff and things I think might be useful for the fleet projects in the future.

Cost of fleet modules is back to below 5 million EC on the Exchange, so decided to splurge. Despite the doffgrinding assignments and selling stacks of particle traces from the asteroid mining, my EC is still pretty low, but I hit 8 million so decided this was worth it - just 50 or so Zen away from having enough for my final module to purchase a Fleet Recon Sci ship. Then I can start saving for all those nifty fleet weapons/equipment!

Crafting seems to be a useful way of getting EC - I've sold a bunch of blue Mk 8 dual disruptor cannons without having to dip in to unreplicatable supplies... how much do those cost, BTW? Since I don't STF or FA, the Aegis set may be my next upgrade and I'm trying to work out if it's easier to craft myself or buy on exchange.

You can get each Aegis for a bit under 2M if you're lucky (I was wondering the same thing as you just today - one of the pieces was down to 1.4M). To craft it takes this stuff. The commons are only 10 dil each, so that's not even a thing, but the uncommons are 1000 dil each, and go for about 100k EC each on the exchange at present. So as of right now, if you have the other stuff and just get the uncommon mats on the exchange, it is cheaper to craft, but not by a whole lot.

Selling antiproton stuff on the exchange looks like a good profit, even if you get the uncommon mats from there too.

You can get each Aegis for a bit under 2M if you're lucky (I was wondering the same thing as you just today - one of the pieces was down to 1.4M). To craft it takes this stuff. The commons are only 10 dil each, so that's not even a thing, but the uncommons are 1000 dil each, and go for about 100k EC each on the exchange at present. So as of right now, if you have the other stuff and just get the uncommon mats on the exchange, it is cheaper to craft, but not by a whole lot.

Selling antiproton stuff on the exchange looks like a good profit, even if you get the uncommon mats from there too.

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Thanks. I'll think on it some more - I don't put a lot of power into engines so not sure if switching out to hyperimpulse from combat impulse is a good idea anyway, though I'm only 2 power below the point where the combat engine bonus stops in any event, despite setting at 25 power base. Maybe now I'm in the TBBS fleet I'll see if anyone is willing to coddle me through an STF or FA... Are there any which are fairly forgiving of cock-ups or don't mandate optimised builds? I never quite wrapped my head around the "running multiple BOFFs with the same ability" idea, I prefer options!

The secret to making money from crafting is, craft Captain-level gear. Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals don't buy crafted gear, but for some reason Captains do a lot. So, as mentioned above, Mk 8 gear is the sweet spot.

Also about the best you can do without having to deal with the idiotic dilithium tax they threw on the crafting system. Below that level, works like normal. After Captain, it completely kills it, and makes crafting not worth it at all. Easier to straight-up buy it from the DIL store, or better yet, just play the STFs and cash in the purple chips for the MK XII purple gear

A quick STF story...and one that reinforces why I like to PUG, though it may not seem like it at first.

I ran CSE yesterday in my Assault Cruiser Refit and had something of an adventure.

In this STF there was no coordination in the group for taking out the cubes. First, no one was finishing off the nanite gennies, I think because they were having such difficulty dealing with the Negh'Var and Raptor that spawn after killing one of the upper level generators. The other players would just run back to the relative safety around the Kang. I started at the right, offed the gennies and the spawned ships, and moved to the next cube to help.

Once the generators were all down, this pair of players started working on the left cube, so I moved to the middle cube. When I had it down to 10%, I looked to see how they were doing, and they were gone! They had dropped back to protect the Kang with the other two players. I went back to the left cube, which was at 70%, and dropped it down to 10%, then looked again at the other players, they were all still loitering around the Kang. I don't know what they were doing. So I went and blew the left cube, then the middle cube, then attacked the middle Negh'Vars from behind while I moved to the last cube, which I was not shocked to find was in perfect health. I worked that cube down and blew it. While I moved back to help at the Kang somebody got it to evacuate the area, securing a win, and then it was carnage.

6 Negh'Vars and a few Raptors were just wiping the floor with the other players, and they had been unintentionally lured to almost right on top of the respawn point, so there was a seemingly never ending loop of near instant death--which I got caught up in after drawing aggro from a poorly timed torpedo spread and foolishly moving into the middle. After a couple deaths of my own, I reversed engines immediately upon respawning, and took a route around them to the other side, so I could pick off ships that strayed from the mob while my teammates were slaughtered.

It was brutal, but in the end, worth it, because I can only believe that the amount of work I ended up doing, needing to blow all three cubes by myself and apparently doing the bulk of the damage in killing all those Negh'Vars, was recognized by the STO gods because a prototype borg engine tech fell in my loot basket after the carrier was destroyed. This enabled me to complement my already complete Mark XII MACO space set with a complete Mark XII Omega Force space set as well.

Back to why I like PUGs. You don't get good stories out of STFs that run perfectly. I felt like a frickin' hero after that CSE, like I was that veteran ship captain that saved the day when everything was going to hell. In the beginning of First Contact, the fleet trying to stop the cube before it got to Earth...that was a PUG, a bunch of ships assembled in a rush to fight an enemy. And the Enterprise arrived in the nick of time. That's how that CSE made me feel as a player. And that's not a feeling you often get from a premade group in my experience.

Can't argue with the feeling, but usually in a PUG group, that feeling is just frustration, followed by failure, followed by anger that they screwed you and you have to wait an hour to try again. I'll pretty much only do the Elite STFs in a group from the, well, EliteSTF channel. Still get a dud occasionally, but 95% of the time, they know the deal, and you don't have issues. Might not always get the optional if something goes wrong, but can't remember the last time i failed one.

While I'm on it, your outlined plan (kill the generators, drop all cubes to 10%, and then kill all) isn't a very good one. Requires a lot more planning (and obeying of the plan) than you can typically pull off, unless your entire group has played together a lot and knows the drill, and can handle things solo.

By far the best CSE plan I've seen/used: 1 guy assigned to Kang babysitting. Other 4 stay together. The babysitter is in charge of going to the left and right, rushing back and forth to kill the BOPs as they come up. Timing should work nicely after the initial spawn, usually someone out of the group of 4 will kill the first right spawn while babysitter goes left.

The other 4 go to the middle cube, and kill all the generators. They are also always responsible for killing the ships that spawn at their cube, as the babysitter has his hands full rushing around. Once they've killed the generators, DON'T try to hurt the cube. Go to the right, and kill all those generators. Babysitter is now responsible for left and middle BOPs. Attack group then blows up the Right cube. They all rush to clean up the raptors that will now spawn in the center, the babysitter goes left to get that group. He may need one person to help, but should be a high-DPS TAC if possible, so probably alright solo. Once the attack group clears the Raptors, they blow the middle cube. Now all 5 can clean out the Neg'Vars that show up, and the attack group works the generators and cube while the babysitter slows down the ships as best he can (usually needs a 2nd hand somewhere along the line, unless attack group works fast). From there, someone rushes to hail Kang, and everyone else cleans up.

It's a pretty basic plan, and doesn't require a lot of communication, you're only responsible for what's right in front of you. Also doesn't require anyone to hold at around 10%, which usually results in someone saying "oops" and blows it up, or they were stupid enough to launch fighters or support ships that they can't call off. Also has the benefit of being the plan that pretty much the entire EliteSTF channel knows by heart, so everyone falls into place quickly. This is the MRRML acronym they'll throw around (Middle probes, Right probes, Right cube, Middle cube, Left all). Try it out, think you'll find it's much easier, and easier to explain and obey. Usually have about 5 minutes left on the timer, unless we got a little weaker SCI mix, or someone's having a poor spell...

I try to be around a lot, and am always up for a STF run if you want to join in and either get pointers or just have another helping hand. Early evening, East Coast time, is usually when you can find me. Usually on for a few min in the morning, but just rotating the DOFF assignments before work, usually no time to play.

That's what it says.
So much for flying the new ship in 2 weeks and be admired by all the noobs.. they fly it, too, now.

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Right, thank you for calling me a noob.

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You know what I mean.
Before yesterday, encountering anyone with this ship would have meant someone to be reckoned with for sure, someone who knows this game in and out.
Even if it was a lifer, he did his time to get experience.

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^^^
That is HARDLY the case, there aare plenty of early adopting Lifers that played the game for a week, quit, check in every onc and a while; but reallyn DON'T know the various changes all that well.

I know because we have a few like that in jmy Fleet who've (for example) never tried STF's etc.

BTW - I too was someone who bought an LTS the first day it was offed during the January 2010 open beta - and would have hit my 1000 day mark on Wednesday 10/10/12; and I could care less that this means other LTS folks no longer need to wait.

Since we can only use these things while the game remains online and active; if this entices more players to send the money (their choice); makes the game more profitable for Cryptic/PWE and maybe entices PWE to continue with the expansion and hiring of more developers for the ST team; it a win for the future of the game, and those of us who continue to play and enjoy one or more aspects of it.

I will say that it wasn't the normal method I would use on CSE. I'm partial to something much closer to the strategy you mentioned, but with the difference of clearing all the gennies and then doing the cubes one by one. In this particular instance I was reacting to the behavior of the rest of the team. MRRML does seem to be the most agreed upon strategy for a quick and efficient victory.

I still find that a great majority of PUGs are successful runs ending with a victory. The only times I get frustrated are with people spamming the team chat with rage about other players.

If I find myself playing when you're on I'd love to run some STFs with you (or other fleetmates). I've actually never done the ground ones, and am just getting some Mark XI ground equipment with EDCs from the space STFs so I no longer need to remodulate manually.

I've found that the best way to gauge how well a Cure ground run will go is based on how long it take to get through the second set of transformers, if the team gets bogged down its probably a right off if not, the team will likely get through it.